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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I noticed there is a slow drible of talk about some of Trumps Executive Orders. I kinda wanted to talk about all of them as a package, and some of them more specifically. I would advise everyone to just go ahead and read all of the executive orders (there are about 50):

https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

They are generally short, about a page long. The titles are descriptive of the goals, so you can even skip reading many of them. And you don't need to hear about them via a second hand source.

I got the general gist of all of them within an hour or two on Inauguration day (when they were posted).

My general impressions:

  1. I like the visibility and ease of reading these. Its nothing like most legislation that goes through congress that often require a law degree, and an in depth knowledge of regulations just to sort of understand them.
  2. I don't like this continuing tradition of using executive orders to run the government. From what I remember this started in earnest under Bush 2. But its also pretty clear that congress is increasingly non-functional and uninterested in their assigned role in the constitution. Congress has delegated away its power for almost 100 years at this point, granting law-making powers to bureaucracies that are run under the executive branch. So I don't like the executive order - ocracy, but it seems there is no alternative.
  3. I care less about the culture war type orders, like renaming things. I think it is probably good to have them in there from a strategy perspective. Let your enemies exhaust themselves on silly issues.
  4. My favorite Executive order: Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce. Basically people in the bureaucracy are supposed to carry out the will and directive of the president / executive branch. If they sandbag or fail to do this, then that is grounds for dismissal. They don't have to agree with the president or be loyal, but none of this "resist" stuff. It was a little ridiculous that this EO needed to be issued in the first place.
  5. The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work. I live close enough to DC. Traffic is going to get worse.
  6. Two executive orders have me worried. One is about cost of living: Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis. The actual text mostly talks about getting rid of barriers and harmful regulations. I hope that is where it stops. But populist politicians have often resorted to price controls to "fight" inflation. I strongly hope they avoid that pitfall.
  7. The other EO that worries me is related to trade America First Trade Policy. The basic economics case against tariffs seems air tight to me. Tariffs seem like a classic policy failure to me. The costs are distributed among all US consumers, but the benefits are often concentrated within certain sectors, or even specific companies. I was also hoping to see an end to the Jones Act, but this EO seems like it thinks that legislation is great.

The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work.

Me too but for a different reason. They're basically firing me. I work for the military but live in a deeply red and Trumpian state rather than DC. I'm close to some of the companies we contract with to build our stuff and I'm the point man going into their facilities and working with them. If I can even keep the same job, we'll just have to live in DC and I'll fly here and work here not quite constantly but a whole bunch. A good chunk of my life will be separated from my family.

My wife makes more money than me because private sector over government but I was willing to try to help our military. We can't make her quit her job and try to survive DC cost of living on my salary alone. I don't want to uproot everything and move away from family. I don't want to leave Trump country for the cess pool. I can't imagine having to send our kids to DC schools.

I hear @jeroboam saying:

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

Would he tell me, "If only Stalin Trump knew..."? He's forcing Reds to either subject themselves to local Blue rule or quit his government. Purging his own allies. There's so much to like about him taking control back. I saw that he's getting rid of DEI, affirmative action, Schedule F'ing the resistance, and even detransing the active duty. Makes me want to stay and help. But I just can't see doing it. I can't send my kids to DC schools.

Bluntly, I didn't consider this downside. I still think the inevitable dilution of entitled incompetents may be worth it.... but I can see this changing the algebra there.

I think it's much more likely to increase the concentration of incompetent workers. WFH or hybrid schedules are going to be worth tens of thousands of dollars a year to your typical professional type. This is effectively being told you're all taking a huge pay cut and the only people either publicly or privately who would endure such a thing are the ones who don't think they can do better in the private sector or they are in their position for non-monetary reasons like ideology.

Blanket RTO orders are great for temporarily juicing stock at a company but they are cutting labor costs by removing your most competitive workers.

This is fun to think about, but while this only applies to software engineering, the gist of the most recent and comprehensive study I've seen is that:

  • WFH orgs have the most top tier talent (> 1x engineers) but far more "ghost engineers" (<.1x)
  • On the balance, WFH orgs have less overall output

We'll see how it pans out, but if any industry is ripe for WFH fraud it absolutely has to be the government.

The crux of such a study would be in how you're defining output or productivity. Is that lines of code and is more lines good? What is the equivalent in other fields, how is it being measured, etc.

The twitter thread shows the methodology. Please actually read it.

It's my industry, so I think it's as good as it can reasonably be.

Twitter is so useless these days. Why lock threads behind an account?

It's my industry, so I think it's as good as it can reasonably be.

How well do you think it translates to other jobs?

Sorry, I did not consider that you didn't have an account. I personally think it's worth having one to lurk. It's still a great source of info.

Here's the image describing it but to summarize, the methodology uses an AI model trained by experts about "meaningful" commits. In other words, not Lines of Code, which I agree is an imperfect metric at best.

How well do you think it translates to other jobs?

Probably well, on the balance. First, it's probably the profession best positioned to be analyzed in terms of measuring output. Second, if any job can be effectively executed in a WFH context, it has to be software. There's no other industry with more capabilities to deliver value remotely. This is probably the absolute best case for WFH advocacy. Even the sub-disciplines near software engineering like product ownership are even more hilariously ripe for grift.

As I mentioned in another comment, I am a big WFH advocate. It's made my life measurably better, and the company I work for deals with its benefits and drawbacks very well.

But I think most places are not, and very few (no?) frontline workers are interested in being honest about the downsides.

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